“Star TV did a great job of promoting the league. They said the benchmark was 50 million viewers for it to be a hit. At the end of six weeks of the league, they had had 493 million viewers. Kabaddi resonated with the Indian public,” said Bachchan.

Star India had recently announced that it would be offering its channels on reference interconnect offer (RIO) to multi-system operators. This will mean that Star India channels will be offered individually rather than in the form of a package. TDSAT further directed that all MSOs should either sign the new incentive based RIO or the old RIO starting today, November 10, or face disconnection of Star India signals. With this decision hanging in the balance, we asked marketers about their opinion